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The St. Thomas Boys Choir, whose history dates back to the year 1212, is the oldest cultural establishment in the city of Leipzig. Outliving all political, municipal, religious, and educational controversy for 800 years, musica sacra has shaped the choir's past. Through the influence of the many St. Thomas Cantors, including the most famous- Johann Sebastian Bach (Thomas Cantor 1723-1750)- the city of Leipzig and the St. Thomas Church became the center of Protestant church music. The St. Thomas Church is home to the Boys Choir. A choir rich in tradition, they are committed to continuing this musical legacy. This release contains the award-winning two-hour documentary “Die Thomaner – A Year in the Life of the St. Thomas Boys Choir Leipzig” by Paul Smaczny and Günter Atteln as well as the breathtaking recordings of two of Johann Sebastian Bach’s major choral works: the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor.

Still in her 20s, the French pianist Lise de la Salle has established a reputation of being among the best of the next generation of gifted classical performers with an impressively inquisitive catalog and a reputation for mastery of tonal nuances. This collection taken from de la Salle’s 2013-15 Artist in Residence with the Opernhaus Zürich presents live performances of Rachmaninov’s late Romantic piano concerto masterworks along with his transcription of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini together with the Philharmonia Zürich led by General Music Director Fabio Luisi.

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This box set contains three extraordinary ballet choreographies by the successful German choreographer Christian Spuck for the Ballett Zürich whose ballet director he has been since the 2012/13 season: Verdi’s Messa da Requiem conducted by Fabio Luisi, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, conducted by Paul Connelly, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet conducted by Michail Jurowski. Christian Spuck comes from Marburg and was trained at the John Cranko School in Stuttgart. He began his dance career with Jan Lauwers’ Needcompany and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Ensemble Rosas. In 1995 he became a member of the Stuttgart Ballet and served as the company’s resident choreographer from 2001 to 2012. In Stuttgart he created fifteen world premieres, including the story ballet Lulu. Eine Monstretragödie after Frank Wedekind, Der Sandmann and Das Fräulein von S. after E.T.A. Hoffmann. Since the 2012/13 season, Christian Spuck has been director of Ballett Zürich.

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This box set contains three extraordinary ballet choreographies by the successful German choreographer Christian Spuck for the Ballett Zürich whose ballet director he has been since the 2012/13 season: Verdi’s Messa da Requiem conducted by Fabio Luisi, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, conducted by Paul Connelly, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet conducted by Michail Jurowski. Christian Spuck comes from Marburg and was trained at the John Cranko School in Stuttgart. He began his dance career with Jan Lauwers’ Needcompany and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Ensemble Rosas. In 1995 he became a member of the Stuttgart Ballet and served as the company’s resident choreographer from 2001 to 2012. In Stuttgart he created fifteen world premieres, including the story ballet Lulu. Eine Monstretragödie after Frank Wedekind, Der Sandmann and Das Fräulein von S. after E.T.A. Hoffmann. Since the 2012/13 season, Christian Spuck has been director of Ballett Zürich.

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This box set contains four exceptional and star-studded opera and operetta recordings from the Opernhaus Zürich: Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi, Berg’s Wozzeck, Massenet’s Werther, and Lehar’s Das Land des Lachelns. Philharmonia Zurich is the orchestra of Zurich Opera. As an independent body of 116 contract players, it has existed since 1985 under the name of Zurich Opera Orchestra. It was renamed in 2012 with the appointment of director Andreas Homoki and general music director Fabio Luisi. The Choir of the Zurich Opera House, with its 60 permanent members and the participation of up to 160 performances per season, forms an essential cornerstone of the artistic ensemble at the Zurich Opera House. Under the umbrella of the most traditional Swiss opera house, it unites singers on the highest professional level, whose musical and stylistic versatility is combined with the power of acting and spontaneity. On a regular basis, the members also prove their artistic format as soloists. The choir reflects the claim and the radiance of the Zurich Opera in its international composition, which have been proven by numerous DVD recordings and were awarded the “Opera Company of the Year” in 2014.

Excerpts of reviews of previously released volumes in this set:

Berg: Wozzeck

This is a finely honed production that follows its premise to an absurdist conclusion with slick theatricality and dispassionate zeal. All sentimentalism is banished here. So, largely, is the opera’s plea for justice and compassion. It is left to Christian Gerhaher’s Wozzeck to fight that battle, which he does with formidable diction and great lyrical beauty, offering, where he can, a still centre in the tumult.

– Gramophone (DVD/Blu-ray of the Month, November 2016)

Massenet: Werther

Director Tatjana Gürbaca and designer Klaus Grünberg have transformed Massenet’s masterpiece into a compelling drama that glues you to the edge of your seat from start to finish. Flórez gives the performance of his career as a hero who knows that death is where passion is fulfilled. Anna Stéphany’s Charlotte, by turns terrified, tender and tearful, is with him all the way.

–BBC Music Magazine

Star conductor Myung-Whun Chung is a cultural ambassador of his home country South Korea and has dedicated himself for many years to promoting young Korean artists. Since pianist Sunwook Kim won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006 at the age of 18, he and Chung have enjoyed a close musical partnership. Sunwook Kim has received outstanding international reviews for his previous solo recordings of piano works by Beethoven, Brahms and Franck. The composer Johannes Brahms is very close to the pianist's heart and it is no coincidence that his Piano Concerto No. 1 was at the heart of Kim's Asia tour with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and its first guest conductor in the fall of 2019. The recording of the Piano Concerto is complemented by the Six Piano Pieces, op. 118. The Piano Concerto was recorded live at the Seoul Arts Center in South Korea in September 2019 and the Six Piano Pieces in June 2020 in the Mendelssohn Hall of the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

Both already accomplished soloists, violinist Judith Ingolfsson and pianist Vladimir Stoupel began an outstandingly successful collaboration in 2006, devoting their partnership to chamber music and cultivating uncommon repertoire. The music on this album is dedicated to composer Louis Vierne (1870-1937), whose life was marked by unfortunate events and was influenced greatly by the first world war. This album includes Vierne’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in G minor, and his Piano Quintet in C minor. Ingolfsson and Stoupel are joined by violinist Rebecca Li, violist Stefan Fehlandt, and cellist Stephan Forck for this recording.

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The festive series of concerts to celebrate the inauguration of Andris Nelsons and the 275th anniversary of the Gewandhausorchester concluded with a riveting performance of two of music history’s great symphonic works. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 is one of only two that Mozart wrote in a minor key, which only adds to its singular reception in his canon of symphonies. Tchaikovsky was an admirer of Mozart’s music and paired the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, which he himself conducted, with dances from Mozart’s “Idomeneo”. The “Pathétique” would become his legacy as Tchaikovsky died only a few days after its premiere. Andris Nelsons is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and is Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. With these positions, and in leading a pioneering alliance between two such esteemed institutions, Grammy Award-winning Nelsons is firmly underlined as one of the most renowned and innovative conductors on the international scene today.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano works occupy a special place in Margarita Höhenrieder's artistic work. In a certain sense, this is almost "logical", since she herself is part of a very special Beethoven lineage: her teacher Leon Fleisher was a student of Arthur Schnabel, who in turn studied with Theodor Leschetizky, who had learned his piano playing from Carl Czerny. And Czerny was a student of Beethoven! For the recordings of all five of Beethoven's piano concertos, Margarita Höhenrieder has top-class orchestras and conductors at her side, including the Staatskapelle Dresden under Fabio Luisi and the Bamberg Symphony under Martin Haselböck. The recordings are complemented by extensive bonus material: a portrait of the pianist and conversations between Höhenrieder and the conductors provide an insight into the life and work of an artist for whom her own concert activities are just as important as the education of the next generation.

Franz Schubert’s Winterreise, a cycle of 24 songs for voice and piano set to poems by Wilhelm Müller, is not only regarded as the zenith of Schubert’s song composition, but as the pinnacle of German art song in its entirety. German composer Hans Zender arranged the cycle in 1993 with the title: “Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ – a composed interpretation“. Zender’s version for tenor and chamber orchestra reveals the cycle’s potential to disturb, and approaches Wilhelm Müller’s poems in its own way. Zender pushes into the darkest regions of human existence. With his interpretation, he brings to light emotions that pulsate just beneath the surface in Schubert’s work, uncovering the uncanny layers in the depths of the music. Like Hans Zender, Christian Spuck’s production, which was awarded the renowned Prix Benois de la Danse in 2019, concerns itself less with illustrating the external stations of the traveler’s journey. Instead, it approaches the cycle with thoroughly comprehensive abstraction. Using a mixture of large ensemble scenes and intimate solo images, Christian Spuck undertakes a journey into the innermost self. As he does so, he explores such timeless themes as love, longing, alienation, and abandonment, allowing the medium of dance to provide new perspectives on one of the greatest works of classical music.

In August 2020, Herbert Blomstedt made his debut with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. You could hardly tell that the maestro had celebrated his 93rd birthday only a month prior for he continuously exudes vitality, awareness, and curiosity. “I’m in love with music,” says Blomstedt, who views his profession as a kind of joie de vivre. Together with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Martha Argerich he revealed just what this joy sounds like with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 – the work that marked Argerich’s stage debut in 1949 - and Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3, the famous Eroica. Recorded live at the Concert Hall of KKL Luzern, August 2020.

In August 2020, Herbert Blomstedt made his debut with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. You could hardly tell that the maestro had celebrated his 93rd birthday only a month prior for he continuously exudes vitality, awareness, and curiosity. “I’m in love with music,” says Blomstedt, who views his profession as a kind of joie de vivre. Together with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Martha Argerich he revealed just what this joy sounds like with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 – the work that marked Argerich’s stage debut in 1949 - and Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3, the famous Eroica. Recorded live at the Concert Hall of KKL Luzern, August 2020.

Advent is a time of heightened feelings: anticipation and tense expectation alternate with moments of reflection and proverbial contemplation. The Holy Night, finally, is both: a bright and radiant time, but also a darkness that invites to contemplation. Advent is also a time of contrasts: the king of the world is a child, the savior of the world lies in a manger among animals. It is these tensions, contrasts and manifold states of mind that are at the heart of the new album of the Dresdner Kammerchor with music for Advent and Christmas by Michael Praetorius (1571-1621). 2021 is the year of the 450th anniversary of the birth and 400th anniversary of the death of Michael Praetorius. He was a composer, organist, court kapellmeister and scholar in the transitional period from Renaissance to Baroque. He is one of the most important musicians in Europe around 1600. The program provides a selection of the most beautiful Advent music to accompany not only the Advent and Christmas season with his masterpieces, but also to let the listener discover the music of Michael Praetorius.

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Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Trumpet Concerto op. 94 was composed in his most productive creative phase and premiered in Moscow on 6 January 1968. Shostakovich once described it as a "symphony for trumpet and orchestra" - no wonder, since it showcases the whole variety of Weinberg's compositions: from the bitingly humorous first and sumptuously colorfully orchestrated second movement to the wonderfully collage-like finale, fabulously interpreted by Hakan Hardenberger to celebrate the composer’s 100th anniversary. After the Sixth and Fifth Symphonies, Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig add Tchaikovsky’s Fourth to their cycle featuring the symphonic works of this outstanding composer.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Trumpet Concerto op. 94 was composed in his most productive creative phase and premiered in Moscow on 6 January 1968. Shostakovich once described it as a "symphony for trumpet and orchestra" - no wonder, since it showcases the whole variety of Weinberg's compositions: from the bitingly humorous first and sumptuously colorfully orchestrated second movement to the wonderfully collage-like finale, fabulously interpreted by Hakan Hardenberger to celebrate the composer's 100th anniversary. After the Sixth and Fifth Symphonies, Andris Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig add Tchaikovsky's Fourth to their cycle featuring the symphonic works of this outstanding composer.

"How did Ludwig van Beethoven become a great symphonist? A milestone on his way there is marked by the Septet, which he composed in 1799, on the threshold of a new century, for this large-scale chamber work, with its mixed instrumentation of winds and strings, already assembles an orchestra ""en miniature"". At the same time, however, Beethoven thus founded a new genre of ensemble music, which was to be followed by numerous composers from Franz Schubert to Johannes Brahms and Jean Françaix with nonets, octets, sextets or quintets. Beethoven's radiant and entertaining septet combines logic with catchiness and offers a spiritual musical conversation. And it is in this discipline that the soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, who are dedicated to making music in friendship, are masters. They also prove this in the Nannerl Septet, which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart probably created in 1776 for the name day of his sister Maria Anna: artfully playful music of the best festive and champagne mood."

REVIEW:

Mozart’s Divertimento in D (K 251) is buoyant and fortunately classical all the way, with no attempt to ramp it up and make it loud or romantic. This is pleasant music, hardly world-shattering, but it is played with obvious respect and affection. The Lucerne soloists make a good case for Beethoven’s Septet, emphasizing its Mozartean qualities. The theme and variations (IV) are the high point, as the musicians patiently and gracefully explore the melodies. In V and VI the horn passages are handled with aplomb by Stefan Dohr, and the concert concludes without any applause. The packaging is simple yet in good taste, and the notes add considerable context to the music with stories of the Mozart family’s informal chamber music sessions.

– American Record Guide

In its choreographed version of the St. Matthew Passion, the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart offers new dimensions to Bach‘s musical drama. And, for the one hundred schoolchildren who delved into Bach‘s monumental work and learned to dance as an artistic form of self-expression, it was an opportunity to experience the power of his music first hand. The interplay of professional musicians and young amateurs turned into a creative bridge for all involved. By deciding to have its own baroque orchestra and a choir formed of singers with practical, performing criteria in mind, the Bachakademie is forging a new path. The basic kind of sound, and at the same time the unique international selling point of this new approach underlies the Bachakademie’s decision to commission a historical replica of a chamber organ by the legendary organ builder and contemporary of Bach, Gottfried Silbermann. An original instrument by him has recently been discovered in Seerhausen, Saxony. As an example of the baroque sound, true to the original, this replica embodies the approach at the very heart of a Bachakademie of the future. The newly-founded baroque orchestra and the newly-constituted choir of the Bachakademie will perform under the joint name GAECHINGER CANTOREY from now onwards. Based on the historic foundations of the Bach era, and with roots in the living performance history of the choir founded by Helmuth Rilling, this name represents an integrated musical approach and the aesthetic sound ideal of the baroque.

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Recorded live at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig in May 2017, this release features a delightful concert by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and conductor Andris Nelsons. For the program, the conductor has chosen works by Antonin Dvorak, including the Othello Concert Overture, and his famous Symphony No. 9 in E minor- “From the New World.” Also featured in this concert is young soprano Kristine Opolais. Acknowledged as one of the most exciting sopranos before the public today, she made her debut in October 2010 at the Bavarian State Opera House in Munich in the title role of the new production of Dvorak’s Rusalka directed by Martin Kusej. It seems only fitting that she return to Dvorak for this performance. This recording was made during Andris Nelsons first season as Gewandhauskapellmeister.

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“I‘m a pukka Indian. Mumbai is my home,“ says Zubin Mehta about his birthplace. The Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra traveled to India in 2016 with his inspiring 110-member orchestra where together they celebrated Maestro Mehta‘s 80th birthday with two fantastic concerts at the National Center for Performing Arts in Mumbai. The concert programs featured works of some of Mehta‘s favorite composers, performed together with three of his closest musical friends: Pinchas Zukerman, Amanda Forsyth, and Denis Matsuev. This live recording features those April 2016 concerts in all their glory, featuring works from Strauss, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Beethoven, and Ravel, all in stunning high definition.

Transcribing musical works for other instruments or instrumentations has a long tradition in music history. Sometimes, the composers themselves wrote different versions of their works and often it is the musicians who adapt works for their own instruments. Even great composers have enjoyed arranging the works of their predecessors and have thus transported them into their time and era of music history and lent their own interpretations to them. Among those are Sergei Rachmaninoff, Franz Liszt, and Ignaz Friedman - all three great pianists and composers. Renowned Russian pianist Zlata Chochieva presents their transcriptions of the works of great composers such as Bach, Mendelssohn and Mahler on her new album "(re)creations".

In Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1, the violin does not allow itself a break, continually tells it's dark story, revolves around the same thoughts, jokes and mocks, stutters, gets into the vicious circle of ostinato Passacaglia bass lines, loses itself in the loneliness of the extended cadenza and again and again falls into beguilingly beautiful singing. The Stalin regime would not have missed the fact that although a great many things run in small circles here, nothing "runs smoothly", which is why the premiere did not take place until 1955, after Stalin's death. Peter Tchaikovsky initially thought his "Symphony of Fate" was a failure and believed himself to be at the end of his creative powers. The audience's enthusiasm for the work grew with each performance. It was probably the composer's nature, plagued by self-doubt, that made it almost impossible for him to develop a self-confident attitude to his own creative power. This recording of the 5th Symphony is another milestone in Andris Nelson's Tchaikovsky cycle with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.

It was Stefan Zweig who wrote a particularly colorful description of Georg Friedrich Händel’s “Messiah.” In his “Sternstunden der Menschheit” he creates a living story from the spirit of the work, and in the process allows his readers to glance over Händel’s shoulders whilst he is composing. He revealed the timelessness of one of the most impressive compositions in the history of music. In September 2019, the Gaechinger Cantorey orchestra and chorus under their principal conductor and intendant of the International Bachakademie Stuttgart Hans-Christoph Rademann have recorded this epic work of sacred choral music at St. Margaret’s Church in Gotha, Thuringia, together with an excellent quartet of soloists.

It is with children in mind that I recorded these French Suites, always having heartfelt simplicity and purity in their mind. Children see the world with hope, optimism, and cast in light – much like Miró sees the world. I find a childlike purity in him, similar to what I hear in the French Suites. There is a quote by Miró that touches me enormously and makes me think a lot whenever I play, as it reflects something that may be the most difficult aspect of musical interpretation – and of art in general: To gain freedom is to gain simplicity.'' (Zhu Xiao-Mei) Zhu Xiao-Mei was born in 1949 in Shanghai. She began performing early, playing on Beijing radio and television when she was only 8. When she was ten she entered the National School of Music for exceptionally gifted children. She came to America in 1979, attending the New England Conservatory in Boston. Currently, she teaches at the Conservatoire de Paris.

The St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the greatest works in the history of music. Whenever I study this epochal composition, I always ask myself the question: How can a work of music, which is performed each year in thousands of performances, has been scientifically and artistically interpreted for decades, and worshiped for centuries, remain a new, contemporary, and at the same time universal and supreme idea? It can be achieved if that which is defined as established and comprehensive, and appears or is accepted as unshakeable, is set in motion without capping the connections to the work itself and it's musical- historical, intellectual and theological foundations. Says Hans-Christoph Rademann about one of the monumental sacred works of music history. In November 2020, Rademann and the Gaechinger Cantorey ensemble and chorus, together with an extraordinary group of soloists, set out to lend a new and fresh perspective to Bach's timeless masterpiece of raging choirs, intimate chorales, and emotionally charged arias, which, with it's drama and pictorial quality, allows the listener to experience the well-known Passion story again and again as something completely new and unheard-of.

The Polish National Radio Orchestra is the country's leading performing ensemble and one of Europe's finest broadcasting orchestras. Building on a long tradition, the group performs throughout the world as a musical ambassador for Poland, often featuring works by Polish composers - as the pieces by Karol Szymanowski and Witold Lutoslawski on this CD impressively demonstrate. This is the orchestra's second album with their Principal Conductor Alexander Liebreich. Their first CD together, also with compositions by Szymanowski and Lutoslawski, is already cited as a reference recording, with "thrilling, technically brilliant performances." (Der Tagesspiegel) In the work of these twentieth century masters, we encounter "exquisite compositional refinement of the highest order, born of an awareness of the European tradition," according to Alexander Liebreich. Szymanowski's powerful and imaginative Symphony No. 2, Lutoslawski's groundbreaking Musique fun�bre � la m�moire de B�la Bart�k and his masterpiece Livre pour Orchestre were recorded in Katowice's new concert hall, which opened in 2014 and is already celebrated for it's phenomenal acoustics.